's fastest-growing cities. it was a thriving, bustling hub. in the 1860s, it was pulling immigrants in from ireland, through the potato famines. it had been pulling people in from wales, from scotland. people from all over europe were beginning to come to this honeypot. it's more like a gold-mining town, in effect, than a port city. but it grew rapidly. its population charts just show its rocketing, spiraling growth-- people drawn, in the boom of capitalism, to jobs. narrator: for almost half a ceury, liverpool maintained its position as one of the most important harbors for britain and europe. but in the 1950s things started to change. man: one of the first things that began to happen in the postwar period was that the traditional trade of britain, with its empire, began to decline, but by the 1960s, things were changing very dramatically. narrator: just as the empire was collapsing, the rest of europe was challenging england. liverpool was even more marginal. by the 1970s, thousands of people had lost their jobs. ♪ well, i ain't got no money, ain't got no job ♪ ♪ lord, i could do wi

of a planned economy, beijing invited limited foreign investments in the 1980s. they wanted to spread the wealth around, so they chose locations based onultural connections and geography. from hong kong, then still british, adjacent guangdong was the natural place to invest. taiwan businesses preferred fujian. shanghai was passed over, in part because the communists feared its history, power and foreign influences. its fate changed when shanghai politicians ascended in beijing and designated their city a special economic zone in 1991. since then, shanghai has capitalized on its international legacy. ( man speaking mandarin ) translator: shanghai is the place where there has been a mixing of western culture with that of the east. shanghai has absorbed the best aspects of the cultures from around the world. woman: shanghai is what we call a learning location. it's where companies... foreign companies come to lrn howo do businessinhi, and it's where the chineseearn how do you do ithwest--me what aspects of each system can we meld gether to make it a pce whereneseearn how do you do ithw

the rhine, it came under french influence. the franco-prussian war in the 1870s, however, was partly driven by german efforts to expand to the west bank of the rhine-- that's where strasbourg sits. so it became formally a part of germany at that time. and then in the 20th century, it's fallen back under french control. those original cultural and linguistic ties with germany are still there, so you have a dialect that is a germanic dialect, but it's now, of course, formally a part of france. and this particular and special situation gives it a bifurcated identity, which is really sort of special for a city of its sort. narrator: as the capital of france's alsace region, strasbourg's combination of cultures is one of its strengths. ( speaking french ) translator: we are fortunate, some would say, to be the fruit of a mixed marriage-- a marriage between a so-called "germanic" culture and a latin culture. this is alsace. narrator: you can see this dual history in the architecture here. strasbourg is german in its 16th-century timber-framed houses. strasbourg is french in the ordered lines of t

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